This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
Jan 18, 2012
It’s a World War II campaign largely forgotten, a coastal reign of terror Joe Hoyt and a team of marine archaeologists are determined to bring into sharp focus 70 years later.During the first six months of 1942, German U-boats, often hunting in wolf packs, sank ship after ship just miles off the East Coast of the United States, concentrating their ambushes along North Carolina, where conditions were most favorable. From the beaches, civilians could see the explosions as the submarines sank more Allied tonnage in those months than the entire Japanese Navy would destroy in the Pacific during the entire course of the war.German submariners dubbed it the “American Shooting Season.” While estimates of the carnage vary according to where boundaries are drawn, one survey concluded that 154 ships were sunk and more than 1,100 lives lost off the North Carolina coast in that period....
Source: The Spectator (UK)
Jan 18, 2012
SOUTHAMPTON, ONT.—Wearing blue rubber gloves, Ken Cassavoy is carefully unfolding a threadbare flag on a boardroom table at the Bruce County Museum & Cultural Centre.Though greatly faded, the red, white and blue of a British Red Ensign are clearly visible — a Union Jack in the top left-hand corner, surrounded by a sea of red.This is the first time Cassavoy has unpacked the flag since he fetched it home on loan from Annapolis, Md., where for two centuries it has been a war trophy at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum.As flags go, the ensign isn’t shy. It’s nearly 8 feet tall and is still almost 10 feet long, even after being shortened by about 4 feet when, at some point, the naval museum put a linen backing on it....
Source: BBC News
Jan 18, 2012
A dark chapter of Swiss history is getting increased attention, with the release of a feature film about "Verdingkinder" or "contract children" and an exhibition about them which is touring the country.A common feature of Swiss life until the mid-1950s, Verdingkinder were primarily children from poor families in the cities, forcibly removed from their parents by the authorities and sent to work on farms.There, many of them were regularly beaten and even sexually abused. They had little education and consequently, as adults, little chance of making careers for themselves.Many also found that the abuse experienced in their childhood made it difficult to establish relationships as adults - former Verdingkinder have high rates of divorce and many now live alone....
Source: Salon
Jan 18, 2012
WASHINGTON — North Korea faces the danger of an unguided missile strike, aimed right at the center of power from a direction both near and far.That would be the newly installed supreme leader’s elder half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, who has made some skeptical comments about the weakness of the bloodline that show an unusual insight into what’s going on in Pyongyang even though he’s a few thousand miles away.The wires are abuzz with news of a soon-to-be-released book based on emails and interviews between Kim Jong Nam and a Japanese journalist Yoji Gomi over a seven year period. In the book, which is called “My father Kim Jong Il and Me,” Jong Nam reportedly said that North Korea is bound for collapse and called his half-brother, Kim Jong Un, a figurehead.What “a joke to the outside world,” Jong Nam is purported to have said of the ascent of Jong Un, whom he admitted he has never actually met. More seriously, Jong Nam predicted, “The Kim Jong Un regime will not last long” and “without reform … the regime will collapse.”
Source: New Scientist
Jan 18, 2012
What would have made them laugh? Or cry? Did they love home more than we do? Meet the real NeanderthalsA NEANDERTHAL walks into a bar and says... well, not a lot, probably. Certainly he or she could never have delivered a full-blown joke of the type modern humans would recognise because a joke hinges on surprise juxtapositions of unexpected or impossible events. Cognitively, it requires quite an advanced theory of mind to put oneself in the position of one or more of the actors in that joke - and enough working memory (the ability to actively hold information in your mind and use it in various ways).So does that mean our Neanderthal had no sense of humour? No: humans also recognise the physical humour used to mitigate painful episodes - tripping, hitting our heads and so on - which does not depend on language or symbols. So while we could have sat down with Neanderthals and enjoyed the slapstick of The Three Stooges or Lee Evans, the verbal complexities of Twelfth Night would have been lost on them....
Source: Washingtonian
Jan 18, 2012
When it comes to presidential families, the Eisenhower family is among the quietest. Rarely do they speak up about anything, but that has changed dramatically as plans are finalized for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial adjacent to the Mall. Last week the family members joined forces to protest the design by architect Frank Gehry and the speed with which the Eisenhower Memorial Commission is moving the project forward.A letter sent to the National Capital Planning Commission read, “We are calling for an indefinite delay in the approval process and an indefinite postponement for the groundbreaking for the memorial until there is a thorough review of the design.” It was signed by Anne Eisenhower with the note: “representing all members of the Eisenhower family.”Anne’s brother is David Eisenhower, who resigned from the Eisenhower Memorial Commission in December. Susan Eisenhower, who is an author and an expert on international security and US-Russian relations, is another vocal opponent of the design. We talked with Susan about the memorial, the controversy, and what the family hopes to achieve. The Eisenhower family does not strike me as a family that seeks out controversy. How did this happen?
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Jan 18, 2012
A cast taken from the face of William Shakespeare is to go on display for the first time later this month. The bard's death mask will be shown at the University of Edinburgh's Anatomy Museum from January 28, when it unveils a macabre collection of medical artefacts to the public. Presently on loan from the William Ramsay Henderson Collection, the famous face will soon find a permanent home at the museum.Visitors can also cast an eye over the death masks of Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott, world-famous physicist Sir Isaac Newton, and King George III....
Source: LiveScience
Jan 18, 2012
The fermented cereal beverage enjoyed by Sumerians, so-called Sumerian beer, may have been alcohol-free, suggests a recent review of ancient Sumerian practices.While ancient writings and vessel remnants show that Mesopotamia's inhabitants were fond of fermented cereal juice, how the brew was actually made is still a mystery.To investigate the brewing technologies of Mesopotamia, the late Peter Damerow, a historian of science and cuneiform-writing scholar at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, reviewed archaeological finds of ancient beer production and consumption, as well as 4000-year-old cuneiform writings, which included Sumerian administrative documents and literary texts dealing with myths and legislation....
Source: LiveScience
Jan 18, 2012
The hectic evacuation of the sinking cruise liner Costa Concordia has been compared with the likes of the disastrous Titanic disaster. In fact, Swiss survivors even told the newspaper La Tribune de Genève that Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On," the theme song to the 1997 film "Titanic," was playing in their dining room as the ship hit the rocks.So how do the two shipwrecks match up? While the loss of life on the Titanic was much worse than on the Costa Concordia, even the Titanic's poorly planned evacuation may have been less chaotic than the one off the Tuscan coast. By the numbers, here's a side-by-side look at the two cruise ship disasters:Date of wrecks: The Titanic went down on April 15, 1912. The Costa Concordia capsized on Jan.13, 2012....
Source: LiveScience
Jan 18, 2012
In 1850s America, most people relied on privies and outhouses for their bathroom needs. But the Davis family of Natchez, Miss., had something few other Americans did: indoor hot-and-cold running water and an indoor toilet.Now this marvel of 19th-century technology is getting a new home, moving from the Dunleith Historical Inn to another mansion nearby operated by the National Park Service. The new lodging will give the public a chance to see a pre-Civil War version of a luxurious lavatory, complete with shower/bath combo....
Source: Jeff Biggers in Salon
Jan 18, 2012
Jeff Biggers, the author most recently of "Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland," is currently at work on a new book on Arizona politics and historyIn a clarification of last Friday’s announcement of a list of Mexican-American studies books to “be cleared from all classrooms” in order to comply with a state ban on ethnic studies, the Tucson Unified School District declared Tuesday that it ”has not banned any books as has been widely and incorrectly reported.”
Source: Mother Jones
Jan 17, 2012
Richard Nixon thought that doing it would make him look like a "jerk." Geraldine Ferraro said it spread germs and lipstick, but did it anyway. Andrew Jackson suckered his secretary of war into doing it for him. Davy Crockett did it so much it should have been mentioned in his theme song. We're talking about kissing babies, that revered yet reviled, much-analyzed yet meaningless American political custom.Few candidates dare avoid it, yet no one can point to a case of a politician's failure to do it (or to do it well) causing an electoral defeat. As we head into the thick of another hotly contested baby-smooching season, here's a short history of our love-hate relationship with a campaign-trail cliché.
Source: CNN.com
Jan 17, 2012
London (CNN) -- The year 2012 is a significant one in the Maya calendar.The ancient long count calendar of the Maya, a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished across Mexico and Central America from 2000 BC to the time of the Spanish Conquistadores, states that on the 12th December, 2012, the sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in approximately 26,000 years.And 21 December, 2012, is said to mark the end of the 13th Maya Calendar, a 144,000-day cycle or "b'ak'tun" since the mythical Maya day of creation 5,200 years ago.Though popularly interpreted as signifying the "end of the world as we know it," scholars stress that the end of the "b'ak'tun" does not mean apocalypse....
Source: AP
Jan 17, 2012
LONDON (AP) — British scientists have found scores of fossils the great evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin and his peers collected but that had been lost for more than 150 years.Dr. Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, said Tuesday that he stumbled upon the glass slides containing the fossils in an old wooden cabinet that had been shoved in a "gloomy corner" of the massive, drafty British Geological Survey.Using a flashlight to peer into the drawers and hold up a slide, Falcon-Lang saw one of the first specimens he had picked up was labeled 'C. Darwin Esq.""It took me a while just to convince myself that it was Darwin's signature on the slide," the paleontologist said, adding he soon realized it was a "quite important and overlooked" specimen....
Source: LiveScience
Jan 17, 2012
On this day (Jan. 17) 100 years ago, British explorer Robert Falcon Scott and four weary companions reached their long-sought goal — the South Pole. It was a bittersweet day for the party, perhaps more bitter than sweet, and a milestone that would eventually prove to be their undoing.Not only had their two-and-a-half month march across a glacier, over the Transantarctic Mountains, and through blinding snow taken a toll on the men, but only the day before, on Jan. 16, the team discovered that what Scott had long dreaded had come true....
Source: LiveScience
Jan 17, 2012
What will likely never be forgotten about the Italian cruise liner disaster is the quickness with which the captain of the Costa Concordia abandoned the sinking ship.According to investigators, captain Francesco Schettino maneuvered the ship, which was carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew, too close to shore of the Tuscan Island of Giglio to "make a bow" to the locals. The "significant human error," as described by the ship's owner, Costa Cruises, caused the 114,500-ton liner to capsize just 500 feet from the shore, killing at least 11 people, while 24 remain missing.According to the Italian police, who have detained Schettino on charges of manslaughter, failure to offer assistance and abandonment of the ship, the captain and some of the crew were among the first to bail into lifeboats....
Source: Foreign Policy
Jan 17, 2012
Let's face it. When Millard Fillmore, the undistinguished, uninspiring 13th president of the United States, comes up in political conversation these days, it's usually as the butt of jokes....But last night, during the GOP debate in South Carolina, Ron Paul issued a full-throated endorsement of Fillmore's approach to foreign policy, whether he realized it or not. "If another country does to us what we do to others, we aren't going to like it very much," Paul explained in the context of his opposition to war with Iran. "So I would say maybe we ought to consider a Golden Rule in foreign policy."...OK, but what does all this have to do with Millard Fillmore? The former president, it turns out, expressed nearly the same sentiments in 1850 during his first State of the Union address, in a formulation of foreign policy that sounds an awful lot like Paul's noninterventionist, empire-shunning worldview....
Source: NYT
Jan 17, 2012
First thing Saturday, Pierette Domenica Simpson’s boyfriend called and said, “Go online. You’ll be interested.”She checked the headlines. Something about an Italian ocean liner in trouble. The way the ship was listing, the report that it was taking on water, the light from the cabins reflecting in the water, the passengers’ struggle to clamber into lifeboats — everything seemed so familiar. “I thought, ‘How can this be? It’s 56 years later,’ ” Ms. Simpson said.For Ms. Simpson, the wreck of the Costa Concordia brought back memories of one of the most famous disasters in maritime history, an accident that she survived as a 9-year-old girl: The collision on July 25, 1956, that left the Italian ship Andrea Doria, bound for New York City, listing in the Atlantic after being struck by a Swedish ocean liner, the Stockholm.“It was unreal and surreal, the fact that they were both leaning on the starboard side,” she said. “If you put the two photographs together of the night scene of the Concordia and the night scene of the Andrea Doria with the incline on the starboard side and the lights coming from the portholes, you cannot tell the difference.”...
Source: NYT
Jan 17, 2012
It seems like a classic case of closing the barn door after the horses have gotten out.The Landmarks Preservation Commission voted on Tuesday to declare a row of 26 19th-century town houses and tenements on the north side of Tompkins Square Park in the East Village a historic district. But there was just one problem: A building project that the designation was intended to prevent received a permit from a different New York City agency just hours before and now, essentially, cannot be stopped.Preservationists had pressed the commission to move quickly to designate the north side of East 10th Street between Avenues A and B a historic district. The street has what the commission itself said is “an unusually intact row of single family row houses, including some dating to the 1840s, mid-to-late 19th Century tenements and the circa 1904 Tompkins Square branch of the New York Public Library, already a city landmark.”...
Source: NYT
Jan 17, 2012
The effective federal income tax rate paid by the wealthiest Americans has dropped significantly during the last several decades, largely because of tax cuts on investment income.The last major overhaul of the tax code, signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, set tax rates on capital gains at the same level as the rates on ordinary income like salaries and wages, with both topping out at 28 percent. But that link was uncoupled by his successor, President George Bush, and the rates on capital gains were reduced by President Bill Clinton. President George W. Bush then lowered the rates on capital gains and dividends to a high of 15 percent — less than half the 35 percent top rate on ordinary income.While rates for all American taxpayers have fallen to near 50-year lows, the wealthy have reaped the most savings from the changes because they derive a larger proportion of their income from investments.Between 1985 and 2008, the wealthiest 400 Americans saw the percentage of their income paid in federal income taxes drop from 29 percent to 18 percent, according to data from the Internal Revenue Service....
